Christine Stewart (nee Freeman)

Beryl holding Christine outside the shop.

"Living in the Woods"I was born in 1951 and my parents, Beryl and Owen Freeman, brother Geoff and sister Linda were already living in the flat adjacent to the old picture theatre and shop. They had come from Rosewood where Dad had been a coal miner then had the ice run. The living quarters were tiny, and cramped, three steps up from the shop, with no bathroom or toilet (we had to use the ones at the base of the theatre). This shop was much frequented by the residents of the Woods. Mum tells me that from a very young age I just had to learn to feed myself as she was so busy in the shop. Unsupervised, my sister, Linda, managed to climb out of the window and fall to the ground, breaking her leg and spending a long time in hospital. Mum was a gregarious person who loved talking and laughing with people, so she didn’t find working there with Dad onerous – even though it was hard work there was an enjoyable side to it, and she knew everyone in the Woods. It couldn’t have been easy with three young children. Mum and Dad had the shop before the Hintons and while the picture theatre and the tennis courts were still operating. The pictures were popular – so popular that once all the canvas deck chairs were full, people used to sit on the windowsills to watch the pictures. Interval time in the shop was chaotic.About 1953 Mum and Dad sold the shop as Dad had bought an Ascot taxi. We only moved a little way up the road to the house Dad had purchased at 77 Royal Parade. Our closest neighbours were the Mauchlins, Muntzes, Storeys, Hopes, Hopgoods and the Whites. In those days our houses had no airconditioning, no fans, and no screens so we struggled to sleep on many summer nights. The mosquito nets that shrouded our beds didn’t help with the heat either. On Saturday nights, Mum would take us kids, dressed in our ‘jamies and lugging our pillows, to the pictures then Dad would finish driving and take us home at interval. I don’t know when the picture theatre stopped showing pictures but I can remember learning to dance there after school (first year high school) to the first Beatles music I had heard.It was kid-heaven living in the Woods. Not many cars, plenty of freedom, and always so many kids to play with. Of an evening, after baths and before tea, all the kids would again be out in the street playing. This was despite the fact we had been playing all afternoon. The games seemed to change with the seasons, though skipping and hop-scotch (for the girls) seemed to last most of the year. We did individual skipping and group skipping involving two kids working the long ropes so that intricate and skillful manoeuvres could be performed. Chants and rhymes went hand in hand with skipping. Marbles was huge, especially with the boys.Every house seemed to have a home-made trolley and with the Woods’ streets being steep and most yards having a slope, death-defying stunts were the order of the day. Despite dunnies, clotheslines, fruit trees, and vegie gardens, most backyards still had plenty of room – especially for games like Red Red Rover and Letters. Hockey was huge, and when it was ball-games season, there were always enough kids (girls) for a team.As most kids lived in high houses with exposed wooden beams underneath, hours were spent playing beam. For the uninitiated, this involved throwing a tennis ball against the beams with complicated variations involving clapping & turn-arounds, hoping to attain a high number before dropping the ball. The Hopes, a few doors down, had a huge locust tree that we all used to climb. With the advent of TV things changed somewhat – not as much time was spent playing outside – although TV watching was rationed at our place. Before we got one, I can remember Dad taking us into the city (in our pyjamas) to see a TV in a shop window.During the school holidays, our kitchen table was the scene of innumerable games of cards and Monopoly with the neighbourhood kids. As Mum was a great card player she would patiently teach them how to play. Then for three glorious weeks in January our family would go to Cottontrees at Maroochydore for holidays – the highlight of our year. Pride of place in our lounge was a piano. When our relatives visited we would have lusty sing-a-longs around the piano – on reflection, all the neighbours for some distance would have been able to hear us. My mother could play any music put in front of her – in later years she used to play the piano at the Ithaca Bowls Club. She and Dad played bowls there for many years and attended the Saturday night socials. The three of us learnt to play the piano from a music teacher (Miss McCrystal, I think) who lived over the bridge, next to Chandlers Corner. The park and the creek were just over the road and at night you could hear the constant moan and groan and creaking of the huge clumps of bamboos. It was exciting going down into the creek bed to play though our parents were not so keen about it.There was always a constant stream of people walking along the street. Car ownership was not as prolific as it is today so people had to walk out of the Woods and up the hill (the Terminus) to catch the trams and of course do the reverse - plenty of opportunities to chat over the fence. Most of the mums didn’t go out to work and flower gardens were popular. My sister and I often took posies of fresh flowers to our teachers. Morning tea was usually shared with the neighbours – fresh scones and jam drops and huge pots of tea being the order of the day.

Even when it was raining we had to walk to school – no choice. Bundled up in our raincoats, we still managed to get wet. One lunchtime a week hordes of kids were allowed to leave the school and walk to the fish shop to buy hot chips for 6d. Best chips ever. Some afternoons, before we walked down the hill home we would go behind the school, on top of the cliff, and pick the ‘pretty flowers’ (lantana). We never walked down the hill on the footpath side – we always walked down the ‘track’ with its rocks and rubble and dirt.Most of the kids went to Ashgrove State School and lots of them went to the Methodist Church up the hill for Sunday School and Rays and Ok’s (?) so it was a community of familiar faces and a sense of belonging. I naively thought that everyone lived this way. The Church played a big part in our lives from the social aspect. The Methodists from all over Brisbane would get together for swimming and athletics carnivals for which we used to assiduously train for weeks before competing. My sister & I would walk over to Jubilee Park to train and then walk back. When you needed to go somewhere you just walked. We would go away for Church camps at Margate in the school holidays. The girls’ youth group on a Friday night, Rays, would have hotly-contested ball game competitions with the other Churches in the district on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes we would put on comprehensive concerts in the church hall.The annual fete at the Ashgrove School was a huge affair, eagerly awaited by all the kids. It was traditional to take water pistols there and have water fights (mainly years 6 & 7) – crazy, but it did happen. All the classes put on a display of dancing which had taken months of practice. These were performed on the oval with all our parents up on top under the Jacaranda trees. All the girls got new skirts to wear. Every year our Mum would be working on the chocolate & ham wheel with Thelly Edwards and her husband. One year the school had a ‘dress the bride doll competition’ as part of the fete and the preceding week all the dolls were displayed in the front window of the local haberdashery shop (Ushers, I think) and I can still visualise the spectacularly elaborate creations (by the Mums). Of course, in those days just about every Mum sewed.All the girls I knew from the neighbourhood were Brownies. We would industriously shine our badges and buckles with Brasso and polish our shoes and walk up the hill in our heavy, hot, dark brown uniforms and hats of a Saturday afternoon to the Brownie Hut. We loved the little ceremonies, and were proud to receive our awards. Each group had a section of the yard to make pretty little gardens in with whatever bits and pieces we could find – the simple little things that used to amuse and occupy us! We had bring and buy afternoons at the Hut whereby the Mums would make toffees (covered in 100s and thousands) and all sorts of sweets and we would spend our pocket money liberally. From a reasonably young age we used to walk up Royal Parade, then cross the creek and get to Greenlanes the back way for a swim. In the other direction, at the back of St John’s Wood, we would cross the creek to get to the park where our Sunday School picnics were held. We ran races and won prizes – our leaders had these wooden trays strung around their necks with little prizes to pick from. Then we had treats such as cordial and fairy bread. I can’t remember how often the creek flooded but we kids regarded the occasion as exciting, not dangerous. In a sense we were trapped – only one way in or out of the suburb. All the inhabitants would congregate down at the bridge to watch the water, speculating on its rise and fall. The older boys used to have fun doing dangerous activities such as riding the flooded creek in huge tyres. I had left the suburb by the time of the ‘74 floods but it was devastating for many people. All the old things and treasures that were stored under our house went floating away as well as my sister’s car.Christine Stewart (nee Freeman)chris.stewart37@bigpond.com

Open the file below to read a transcript of an interview with Christine's brother, Geoff Freeman.